Back in Action

My camera had been broken since March, but thanks to Nurse Eric (who went to Yaounde this summer for an anesthetiology formation) my camera is back in my hands and working!

 Funny to think, that once it broke in March I was ready to get rid of it, and go out and buy a new one. But Cameroonians just laughed at me saying, "Amanda, we dont get rid of things here, we learn how to fix them. Just wait, we will fix your camera for you." Sure enough, it took five months but its back in action = )

Here is a shot of Dr. Gaya and Nurse Romeo during an operation in Dir. Dr. Gaya had his first job placement at a clinic up North where he worked underneath an American doctor who did surgeries. Dr. Gaya was his right hand man, and learned through observation. The first time he flew solo the American doctor was out of town, and a woman came in who needed an emergency Cesarean section. The nurses at the clinic told Dr. Gaya, "Listen, you need to operate. We know your worried about her dying on the table, but if you DON'T try to operate, her and her baby will DEFINITELY die." So, he went for it, and operated succesfully. That was 6 years ago and he's been continuing to learn ever since. In Dir, he mostly performs Cesarean sections, hernia repairs, and stomach mass removals (although the other day he did his first kidney removal!!). Its amazing to me to see how, even in a village without electricity, they maintain sterile procedure. (Since starting operation Dr. Gaya has never had a case return because of infection. I think that's partially due to the fact that there are not as many resistant bacteria here, and also that people have very strong immune systems). Unfortunately, Dr. Gaya just got promoted to a different hospital and left Dir this past week. Its a wonderful promotion for him, and after 7 years of excellent service, he was ready to move on, but things at the hospital are definitely going to change while we adjust to his absence.

 

 A picture of some of the women waiting to be seen at prenatal consultations (every Thursday) at the health center. On average, we see about 30 women a week for prenatal consultations! One of our biggest problems at the health center, is that women are very diligent about coming once a month for PNC but then they give birth at home in very unsanitary conditions. Only, to come into the hospital a couple of days later with post partum infections and neonatal infections. Its a message we're trying to drive home pretty hard, because in the past two months we have lost 4 women and 3 newborn babies to infection.

We are almost done with the soy harvest! We only have about one half cart of soy stalks left in the field (but we planted them two weeks after the rest of the seeds so we are waiting for them to fully ripen still). Right now we have about 75 kilos of soy! I had no idea that planting 3 1/2 kilos would give me that kind of yield, aikes a beeee! Now the difficult part is going to see how I can best use those 75 kilos to make a project that will have the most impact and also be sustainable. Here is a picture of the soy laying out to dry after we have removed it from the field. Its best to let it dry in the sun for 3-4 days. This was a comical process because the weather here is very volatile and you never know when a beautiful sunny day is going to turn into a powerful rainstorm (and it can happen in the timespan of 2 minutes, no exaggeration). Over the past three weeks I can't tell you how many times the weather would change and I would run out to the street calling any goober that was nearby, "COME QUICK, THE RAINS ARE COMING, WE HAVE TO BRING IN THE SOY!" haha as per usual, the village thinks I'm crazy.

After the soy has dried for a couple of days the next step in the process is beating it with a stick to get all the little beans out. (Later you remove the stalks and then sweep up the beans, and have to sift them to take out all the dirt and rocks). Here I am, in my concession, getting some serious tension out by BEATING dem soy beans. Notice how my neighbors are drying their clothes in the back ground! Also, its a bit hard to see in this picture, but my land lord is building a new house in the background. Its been neat to see the weekly progress of  how a house comes together with nothing but mud, water, and cement.

At night, or when the rains came, the soy rested in my living room. Looka that mountain of soy! It literally TOOK OVER my house for the three weeks that it took to dry all the soy! (This is the second tours of soy that we harvested, all together we did three tours).

I would have never have been able to harvest all the soy without the help of Ibrahim, (the boy in the middle), a young highschool boy who I hired to help with harvest. He's an orphan and an incredibly hard worker (he is also the guardian of one of our two water pumps in Dir), and throughout the three weeks we really built a friendship as he would come every day to help me collect the soy from the field, bring out/bring in the soy for drying, beat the soy, and sift it. He was literally a God send (and so were my little boy neighbors who are always willing to help me with any little chores I have around the house).

Two of my little neighbor girls, Bebe and Adiza (both ten years old) laying on my porch as they take turns unbraiding each other's hair. Most of a woman's Sunday is devoted to unbraiding and braiding each other's hair. It doesn't cease to amaze me how much time women devote to their time here, or how much patience little girls have to just sit and stay put as they get their hair braided (which can take upwards of 3 hours!) p.s. notice more soy drying in the background.

Last week, we succesfully put on Dir's first "Peer Educator Formation". Here we are taking a "family picture" after the opening ceremony! (You can see the traditional chief behind me) Working with the Youth Delegate, Nurse Romeo, and some of the highschool teachers we were able to take 10 students from the highschool and 8 youth from the community to teach them about the obstacles and issues that face a teenager (with a strong focus on how to choose a positive life and sexual health). The youth we chose were incredible, and really participated in the sessions and have already presented a session about HIV/AIDS to their peers at the high school! Our goal now is that we will continue to see each other once a week (just me and the youth) to continue learning about the subjects they have questions on, and also empowering them to learn how to teach these subjects to their peers. Our major goal is to have a big say in the activities surrounding International HIV/AIDS day, December 1st, 2012.

In order to keep the youth engaged throughout the day, we broke up the sessions with activities such as putting on sketches, games, and animations. Here the youth are taking a (much needed) mid-morning break by playing a game of musical chairs!

I believe I have mentioned before how theatrical of a people Cameroonians are. Its amazing to see how quickly Cameroonians can put together an organized song, sketch, or dance. Here we are practicing a song that they ended up performing for the closing ceremony. They also presented a dance emphasizing the importance of wearing condomns, and put on a sketch about a young girl who disobeyed her older sister's advice and gets infected with HIV.

As the doctor always says at the end of his surgeries, "That's all folks!" (The Doc used to watch Bugs Bunny as a young goober).

One Year Ago....

Just a few shots to share with y'all moments in these past couple of months = )

During the formation with the youth this summer, a couple of the sessions I held involved dance lessons. Here we are teaching a pretty simple salsa routine. People here have a very natural rythym though, so salsa comes very quickly to them.

Vaccination days continue to be some of my favorite days here. Here I am vaccinating some babies in Waah, a village in the deep bush about 40 km outside of Dir. Its my favorite village as its mostly Fulbe women and you have to speak the local dialect to do work. You have to take a motorcycle to get there on a dirt road, (twice the motorcycle has broken down and my fellow nurse and I have had to walk upwards of an hour until we can find repair! But something I love about Cameroonians is how patient they are with those type of problems and both times the nurse and I have only laughed at the situation).

I found a very cheap way to make banana bread and spent most of the month of July teaching women in village how to make it! Here I am in Norbert's kitchen making cake for his kid's birthdays. Birthdays are not really celebrated here in Cameroon, but since two of Norbert's kids have birthdays within a day of each other we decided to throw them a small party. It was pretty simple, with banana bread, popcorn, juice, and about 20 little kids. However, the two little girls were THRILLED to be celebrating their birthday and we spent that Sunday dancing to somebody's radio = )

Sadly enough, Pistache died about two weeks ago. She got pregnant in late June and had a complicated birth (the babies ended up dying inside her belly, and a couple of days later she went septic and died herself). It really shook me, as not only was Pistache my pet, but truly my best companion in Dir (here is a picture of us on one of our many walks around village). As much as her death hit me (the villagers couldn't believe that I would be such a mess over an animal) it has also with time been put into perspective for me. I've had a lot of thoughts in the past two weeks about the difference here, and in the United States about people's relationships with their animals. Even though I loved her dearly, and I'm forever grateful for the companion that she was to me (especially in my first couple of months at post) I realize that she is an animal, and when I'm feeling sad about it, I need to remember that people lose PEOPLE here on such a daily basis.

This is a more encompassing view of the soyfield, when it was still in the process of ripening. Now that the soy is ready for harvest the field looks mostly yellow. We started harvesting last week and it has been A LOT of work. Mostly takes a lot of patience, and constant availability as you pray for sun, and make sure you're ready to bring in your harvest at any moment (because the rains can come so sporadically). And truly it is very labor intensive as you try to get the beans out of their pods. (I will never once again take for granted how easy it is to go to the grocery store in the United States) But we have done about 25% of it thus far and have about 25 kilos of soy already! So if all goes well we should be able to have a TON of soy in about a months time!

On another random note, tommorow commemorates the one year anniversary of this whole crazy adventure starting. It blows my mind that it has already been a year. A part of me feels like I only arrived in this country 10 days ago, and yet the context of this past year has seemed like 10 years of life squeezed into one. I am super grateful for everything that this past year has taught me. About what it means to believe in your capability as a human being, in how human beings are so capable of adapting to different situations. I'm grateful for how much I'm continuing to learn about different ways of living life, about how beautiful life can be when you simplify it, about how I'm constantly challenged at the hospital and in how to deal with how present death is here every day. I feel as if I learn more and more every day what it means to love your neighbor, and a little bit more every day I'm learning what it means to be a friend to yourself. It has been a year that I would relive again in a heartbeat, and I truly look forward to the lessons, adventures, and moments that I know will continue to come.

The Good & The Bad

I know it's been far too long since I've written (my apologies) and I also know that no single blog entry will do the past 3 months justice, so I thought I would instead share some of the major highlights and lowlights of the past couple of months.

Starting with the good sthuff = )

--In June I had my first visitor! Dave was able to take some time off work and came for a little under three weeks. It was surreal to be riding to the airport to pick him up and realize that I've been in this country long enough to be hosting someone. It was wonderful having him here. Cameroon is not neccesarily the easiest or the most relaxing country to take a vacation in (at least by the standard that most Peace Corps Volunteers live) and you really have to have a lot of patience and understanding to make the most out of your time here. But if you approach your time here with those qualities it becomes an amazing place. With Dave, we spent 8 days doing village life. The people of Dir loved having a white man in town (not only because he brought gifts but they really are honored to have guests from the United States) and the people totally came through showing Dave the Cameroonian sense of hospitality that I have written about before. During his time here we got gifted beer, a chicken, meals, beer, clothes and more beer = ) After village life we spent a week traveling to the Southwest and Littoral regions, where we visited other volunteers, hiked and went to the beach. It was good to see more of this country and really made me appreciate how diverse the landscapes, people, and food are throughout Cameroon. The more I see the more I understand why people take pride in calling Cameroon "Africa in miniature" (not that I've seen the rest of Africa, but you know.)

--In July I helped run a summer camp at the mayor's office. Cameroonians have a traditino that most school aged children go spend their summer vacations in other cities or villages. For example, those who are in cities usually do village life for the summer and visa versa. (People joke that it helps the village children from becoming too "Villageois"...which translated to "villager" and is actually quite an insult in Dir!) So the faces of the youth in Dir completely changed over the past couple of months. With that, the mayor's office recruited 16 motivated youth (ranging from ages 12 - 20 ) to spend a month doing a summer camp. Norbert works at the mayor's office so it was easy peasy to get a couple of days to work with the youth. All in all I did 8 lessons with the youth. 3 days were spent learning about HIV, condoms, and STIs. 3 days were spent doing sport and learning a couple of salsa routines, (it was my first time teaching since Fuego and I can't tell you how happy it made me, although the lessons were far more simplified than Fuego routines!) and 1 lesson was devoted to talking about the differences between American and Cameroonian culture. It was definitely rough getting back into the swing of village after having the company of Dave and being reminded of how much I miss home, but the summer camp was really rejuvenating and gave me a lot of purpose throughout hte month of July. I'm also working with the youth delegate to get Peace Corps funding and put on a similar formatin at the high school in October. So it that works out this summer camp would have been good practice!

--In August, I had a fourteen year old girl named Nina come and live with me for two weeks. She lives in a nearby town, Meiganga, where she is next door neighbors to another volunteer. So I had met her a couple of times when I visit Meiganga and when once in passing she told me she would like to come see Dir I told her she would be welcome. So as part of her summer vacation she came! It was super interesting to spend two weeks sharing a living space with a Cameroonian again, and honestly taught me even more about the culture and why Cameroonians do things the way they do. One of my biggest struggles with the culture here is that Cameroonians share EVERYTHING, but having her live with me made me so much more open to sharing my time, food, and living space with my neighbors.

Now onto the bad. I'm not trying to be pessimistic by sharing the bad stuff, but I think it's equally as important, as its very telling of daily life and the experience here.

--Besides helping out with vaccination and prenatal consultatins I've also started helping out with night shifts at the hospital. One of the nurses suggested I start coming once a week because much happens in the evenings and it is a good place to learn. As a sidenote, nursing care here is a whole different ballgame than it is in the States. Due to a MAJOR lack of doctors, nurses pretty much assume the role of doctor. So they are the ones who consult, prescribe, and treat the patient. (Which you need an advanced degree to do in the States.) That, on top of the fact that the hospital mostly deals with diseases that don't exist in the Sttes really puts me back to Day 1 of nursing school in comparison with the other nurses here. But the nurses are super willing to help me learn and I'm loving how much night shift is teaching me. Although, the first time I showed up I didnt' piece together the fact that Dir has not electricity and just had to laugh when we were doing treatment via kerosene lamp (brings a whole new meaning to the image of Florence Nightingale with her lamp) One of Dave's gifts though was a couple of headlamps, which the nurses went crazy over!

One of the nights that I was helping out we got woken up by a knock at 2 am. Two parents had brought their 5 year old boy from a village 40 km away (deep in the bush). Their child had been feeling crummy for a few days and they had waited it out hoping it would go away (VERY COMMON) but that evening he had become incredibly weak and by the time they got to the hospital (their motorcycle broke down 15 km away form Dir, so they had to walk the last 2 hours!) the boy was severely anemic and convulsing. Instantly, the nurses knew that it was a BAD case of malaria (although you can't do malaria tests @ night because to read the blood smear on the microscope, you need light) and decided to treat him for it. But before starting a perfusion of Quinine, the priority was making sure this little goober got some blood in him. Unfortunately, both the mom and the dad were not acceptable donors (the way blood transfusions work here is you test for blood type, then if that is compatible, you check for HIV and Syphillis. After, you draw the blood directly into an IV bag and transfuse it into the person in need. SUCH a different system than in the States, where hospitals have blood banks, but nontheless, it works.) So since the mom and dad were both incompatible, the problem was how to find a donor at 3 in the morning? The parents knocked on three people's door within one hour, and ultimately a teenage girl was found and able to donate. During that hour, it was a very crazy experience to see this little boy convulsing on the bed and being unable to help him and being unsure if we would be able to. Unfortunately, the little boy died later on that day. Not because the treatment wasn't working, but because the parents decided to take the little boy out of the hospital come morning. That happens far too often here and I'm still trying to figure it out. Some of the nurses say that people expect instant results when they come to the hospital, and when they don't get it they prefer to go to what they know..the traditional healers in the quartiers. Some other say it is due to lack of money to continue treatment.

--As part of the great migration that is summer vacation we had a family come and stay in our concession. We had 8 little kids under the age of 6! Which was equal parts mayhem, equal parts incredible entertainment. They definitely kept out concession BUMPING. One morning as I was walking home from night shift (wanting nothing more than a cup of coffee at my table) I tried to open my door and it wasn't working (my key wasn't fitting into the lock). Turns out that one of the 3 year old boys played with my door hwile I was gone and put a stick of wood in the lock! Fortunately, it was market day so the "door man" was coming from the next biggest town over, Ngaoundal, and arriving at about 9 am. Once I knew that, it was sort of comical that my door was broken. All in all, the ordeal involved waiting 4 hours and ultimately taking my door off its hinges and getting a new lock. I was able to laugh it off by the end of the morning with just a gentle reminder to the little kids to NOT play with my door. TOOO gentle of a reminder, because two days later it happened again! OOOF you should have seen me. There's been plenty of time when I've been annoyed here, or lost my patience, but this was the first time since arriving that I was genuinely PISSED! I was blowing steam off like a locomotive. It felt a little ridiculous to be so mad at a 3 year old and his possee but I couldn't help it. Fortunately, we were able to fix the door without the "door man" coming but I had to stomp through village to find someone to fix it. I was NOT so gentle with my reminder the second time around and the goobers were a little scared of me for a few days. Yikes! But by the end of summer vacation the delinquents and I made peace and spent a lot of evenings playing on my porch, so all's well = )

To leave things on a good note here are two exciting pieces of news: Pistache is preggers! (Should be popping out here babies in a couple of weeks!) And here is a picture of the soy field (this was taken a couple of months ago). Its growing beautifully and harvest should be mid-September, afterwards we'll start doing culinary demonstrations with the women in village!

Un, Deux, Trois

1) As Peace Corps Volunteers two of our three goals involve cultural exchange. We are meant to learn about the life of people in other countries and hopefully share that knowledge with Americans back home throughout our service and beyond. We are also meant to share American culture with host country nationals. At times we are the only American people have ever/will ever come into contact with, and thus its a rare opportunity to share what Americans are truly like. This can be a frustrating and amusing task in a place where stereotypes and misconceptions of the United States are sometimes outlandish. People believe that my best friends must be Beyonce, Rihanna, and President Obama, that all Americans have servants, that when cars break down in America we just leave them in the middle of the street because we have enough money to buy new ones, etc...

**Sidenote: Even though sometimes I laugh at the craziness of the stereotypes people hold, I try to remind myself to take a step back and remember how many stereotypes I had of Africa before coming here. How misconcieved I was to group all of Africa's countries into one culture, when truly one country is as different from its neighbor as the Mid West of the United States is different than New England. How scared I was to arrive here and how I had no idea what to expect, and if someone would have told me that I would be wearing a loin cloth and a bone in my head for two years....I would have believed them. But what I've discovered is that I didn't come to a different planet, I didn't come to a different world...I came to a different country, and there are more similarities than differences.**

The most frustrating stereotypes to try to break are truly those related to money. If you are American you must have LOADS of it, point blank, discussion closed. People are constantly telling me how people must be so much happier in America because they have so many more things. Its difficult to explain to people that materialism doesn't equate to happiness, and that there is so much beauty in the simple life that they live here. Its difficult to explain to people that even in the United States people have problems, that people suffer, and that (and this is difficult for them to get their heads around) there is also poverty in the United States. 

One of the most shocking concepts for people to understand is the phenomena of homelessness in the United States. I mentioned in my last blog post, that African hospitality is truly exceptional, and that no matter how many mouths there are to feed, or how many people are already sharing one bed at night, there is ALWAYS room for one more. So when I explain to people that there are people who are suffering in the United States, without a place to rest their head at night, or not having means to find their next meal, people simply do not understand it. They spout back questions like, "What do you MEAN they sleep on the streets? Where are their families? Why don't their neighbors feed them? How can the rich people in your country not give these people something?"

My senior year of college I worked my community nursing clinical at a homeless shelter, and those couple of months taught me that the answers to those questions and the reasons why people fall into homelessness are incredibly complex. However, I think that the simple logic of African hospitality could help answer those questions: someone is hungry, they are human, they are your brother, you give them to eat. End of story.

I recently read an essay by Barbara Kingsolver that struck a chord with me, and this passage explains what I want to say better than I ever could:

"Whatever else "home" might be called, it must surely be a fundamental human license. In every culture on earth, the right to live in a home is probably the first condition of citizenship and humanity. Homelessness is an aberration. It may happen anywhere from time to time, of course, but when I look hard at the world, I see very few places where there resides an entire, permanent class of people labeled "homeless". Not in the poorest places I've ever lived, not even in an African village where everyne I knew owned only one shirt (at best) and most had never touched an automobile. Because even there, as long as the social structure remains intact, people withut resources are taken in by their families. Even if someone should fall completely apart and have to go to the hospital, which means a trek on foot over dozens of miles or more, the whole family goes along to make sure the sick one is taken care of. "Home", in this case, becomes portable. I know this because I lived as a child in an African village that housed the region's small, concrete-block hospital. Whever I walked past the hospital's lively grounds never failed to impress me. It was just a bare-dirt plaza, maybe stretching among all its corners to the size of a city block, but it was always a busy place, where dozens of families camped out around their cooking fires while waiting for some relative to have an operation, have a baby, or die. Meanwhile they passed the time by singing, mourning, washing dishes, arguing, daydreaming, or fussing at toddlers who ran around wearing nothing but strings of beads around their bellies. In the rest of my life I have never witnessed another scene so solidly founded on both poverty and security. I don't wish to glorify the impoverished half of this equation; these children had swollen bellies from kwashikor, and they had parasites. But they also had families they could not forget under any circumstances, or ever abandon, or be abandoned by, however they might fall on madness or illness or hard times. I don't believe that the word homeless as it's used in our language could be translated there."
                                                                                                         
                                                                               -"Household Words" Small Wonder

2) On the topic of African hospitality, a couple of weeks ago I had one of my most powerful moments yet to date in country. Papa Iza and I had gone out en brusse to vaccinate DEM BABIES! We are now at the debut of rainy season (in Cameroon there are only two seasons: rainy and dry) and the expression, "When it rains it pours" has never made more sense to me. The rains here are truly impressive, and they arrive very quickly, with almost no warning. After a day of vaccinations, Papa Iza and I are on our way back to Dir and noticing that the skies are changing. Still 25 km away, there is no way we are going to make it back to Dir before the rains arrive. Fortunately, we came across a settlement of farmers living in straw huts within a few minutes, and pulled over. No questions asked, we walked into the community, we were welcomed, and we took shelter from the pouring rain for close to an hour and a half. Sitting on the floor of this hut, making conversation with this family of 5 cooking their dinner, I was overwhelmed with emotion at the beauty of how fluidly we had been accepted into their home and into their afternoon. We needed shelter, and we were given it, no questions asked.

3) Some of the advice that more senior volunteers have given me is to not rush into any projects, because what you decide to get involved in will be your life for the next two years. I'm taking that advice to heart on most projects, slowly deciding when to say yes and when I need to say no. However, because we are at the debut of rainy season, farming season is at its peak. The land needs to be tilled before the rains start, and seeds need to be planted a couple weeks after.  Norbert (my counterpart) and I had to make a quick decision as to whether we wanted to start a soy project. Soy is something that I have been thinking about for a while, and with its insane protein value, something that I really do think can make a difference in Dir. So! We have started a community soy field!

Norbert has a background in agriculture and he couldn't be happier to be helping me learn how to farm. His neighbor gifted us a terrain of land across from the hospital and over the past couple of weeks we have worked the land and its ready to be planted! 

We've had two community efforts at the soy field, both on Saturday mornings. These were my first attempts at trying to organize and motivate people in the community, and there were a lot of lessons learned from them. I had talked to maybe fifteen people who had given me a definite, "Yes! I will be there Saturday morning". Yet, come Saturday morning only about four of those people showed up. At first, I was pretty down by the outcomes and overwhelmed as to how we were going to convert this field into a farm, but slowly and surely it happened. Although the people I asked to come did not show up, people I have never met who were simply walking by came to help for twenty/thirty minutes and continued on their day. Once the kids got out of school (there is a halfday of school each Wednesday, so thus...school on Saturday mornings) they came and did so much good work! We drank honey wine, and were gifted some rice from neighbors, and when the morning of work was finished we sat around and shared a meal. The second community effort was entirely different, with mostly teenage boys and I working the field together. So I learned that I need to keep my expectations flexible, that simply because something doesn't go as I planned, it doesn't mean that it isn't working. And that when I decide to focus in on what ISN'T happening, I fail to notice the good that is.

A couple of mornings over these past couple of weeks, I have gone to the field by myself to get some work done. These mornings have been exhausting, my body and hands hurt afterwards, and there have been mornings where my body wakes up feeling 40 years older than it actually is. Yet, there is something incredibly rewarding about working the Earth, and realizing how much WORK goes into producing a crop of food. More than anything, these mornings have made me realize how hard people must work here to survive. People work the fields year in and year out in order to put food on the table. With the combination of physical labor and heavy sunshine I am starting to understand why the older generation here looks so much older than they actually are.

Wrapping this up now, with love = )

Glances Of Life

      Last week was our six month anniversary of arriving into country! As part of the Peace Corps timeline, last week, my fellow volunteers from my training class and I met up in Bamenda (the regional capitol of the Northwest region) for a seminar put on by the Peace Corps. During this seminar we were meant to reflect/present on the observations that we have made during our first three months at post. We also recieved much information on project planning and funding opportunities so we can have more direction on where we want our work to go over these next couple of years. I have a thousand ideas running through my head as to where I will want my work to go, but as my program manager told me "unless you focus in on one or two projects that you feel passionate about, your work will not be sustainable". So now the challenge will be returning to post and starting the conversations and work that will help me hone in on those projects and start them rolling. With that said, I can't believe how quickly the past three months in Dir have flown by, and I wanted to share some glances of them with you.

 The Adamoua Region is nicknamed the "Land of Milk and Honey", which is incredibly accurate as you can find cows and honey all over the place (even on the side of the street!). Cows are a huge part of the cutlure here, particularly  for the Mborro people, whose men inherit cows as part of their birthright (unfortunately, since most young boys have a herd of cattle to tend to they do not attend school---and when the Mborro boys do not attend school neither do girls).

      

Traveling in this country has taught me a lot, mostly how to find humor in the situation and learning how to be patient. The coasters here will take you almost anywhere, but they do not run on a schedule, so you simply have to wait for the car to fill up before the driver leaves. I have had some voyages go incredibly smoothly, where you arrive exactly at your destination time. And then, I have had some voyages that are extended six hours because the tire popped and we need to wait for the next coaster to show up to fix it! Something I do absolutely love about this country though is that whenever you voyage you really do become a community with the people on the coaster with you (and you kind of have to because you are practically sitting on top of each other--its crazy how many people the driver will load into the car!) 

       

   

A shot of the medical center in Dir! Behind the health center, there are fields that the doctor owns and that I am hopefully going to start a small soy farm on. With that I hope to integrate nutrition counseling for HIV + patients.

 

     

My house-- Cameroonians have about three or four colors that they use for painting here so voila, my house is painted pink! Most people in Dir live in mud brick houses, with straw roofs so I feel incredibly lucky to be living in such a modern/beautiful home (as another plus cemented houses are supposed to keep out scorpions!) 

       

My friend, Olivia, working the fields. This is a shot of the field, after it has been cleared of herbs and burned. Now she is starting to work the earth to prepare it for seeds. Agriculture is a huge part of the culture in Cameroon, and close to 70% of people work the fields/make a living off of the earth. Olivia is one of my true friends in village, and she is always teaching me things that she calls the "True African Experience" = ) You might not be able to see in this picture but note, how she is working barefoot and in a dress!

My neighbors sitting around a eating lunch. In Dir, the main food group is cassava (called manioc), and people eat it (in the form of cous cous) about three times a day! (Unfortunately, it is one of the only Cameroonian dishes I do not like = P ) Food is served on big plates and everyone gathers around to eat the manioc with their hands and dip it in traditional sauces. The diet here is a huge source of malnutrition in the community, as manioc has a lot of calories (and leaves people feeling full) but has almost no nutritional value. One of my favorite things about the culture here, is how generous people are with their food. No matter what, if someone shows up during eating time (and it could be a brother, or it could be a complete stranger) they are offered food as a means of welcoming them and helping them feel at home.

Nurse Eric and I working the vaccination table on market day. I am learning so much from Eric about health care in this country and vaccination days are some of my favorites. The Cameroonian government provides free vaccination for all infants 0-11 months and there is never a lack of women with their infants. Here you can see some of the traditional outfits women wear, and you can also see how comfortable women are with breastfeeding in public here (it is seen as natural so there is no shame in it).  Within the past months, I have started accompanying Eric and Papa Iza (the other nurse at the health center who works with vaccinations) into the bush to help with vaccinations. These days have really opened my eyes to the extreme conditions of poverty that these Cameroonian families are living in.

For Christmas this year, a fellow volunteer found me a kitten! If you would have told me seven months ago that I would be in love with a cat I would have told you "No way! I'm a dog person". But life here is full of suprises and sure enough I am head over heels for Pistache. She was tiny when I first got her so I carried her around with me almost everywhere and so now the people of Dir know her very well, and a normal salutation for me is "Amanda, ca va?" "Comment va Pistache?"  She is about 3 1/2 months old now, and here is a picture of her with her namesake (pumpkin seeds, which are used here to make sauces).

  

    

 

For Women's day (March 8th) I partook in a traditional dance, from the East region, with a couple of other village girls. Here we are interpreting a dance about fishing at the river. Sylvie (the girl in front) is wearing the traditional outfit (Fortunately she did not have two of them, as even though I'm feeling comfortable in Dir, I'm  not quite ready to wear coconut shells in front of the community!)

  

Interpreting another traditional dance!

  

Here I am with a group of women, getting ready to march in front of the community for Women's Day. Women's Day is a big event here, and the celebration started 4 days before March 8th. The women participated in sporting events (cross country races, soccer matches against a nearby village, and handball matches), prepared a culinary feast at a local bar, cleaned all the important building in Dir, and presented dances and sketches in front of the community. In the tradition of wearing a "uniform" the Cameroonian government issues a Women's Day tissue every year so that women can look "ensemble" for the big day!

     

Also, for Women's Day, there was a big dinner and dance party in the evening at the Mayor's house. Here I am with the nurses at the hospital taking a break from dancing = ) (I have grown to absolutely love Cameroonian music and dance moves!)

       

A picture with Norbert, my community host, his wife Djanabo, and their 4 month old daughter Angeline. Norbert was such a help during my first three months in Dir and he really watches out for me, often calling me his (ELEVENTH!) child. As part of the seminar that the Peace Corps had last week, they have asked us to identify a member of the community, that we feel we will be able to work with succesfully during the next two years. Norbert is the general secretary to the mayor of Dir and has a real sense of what development is. He also has a lot of experience in agriculture and working with HIV + populations, so I was more than happy to make him my counterpart and have him travel with me to Bamenda.

Months Past

I apologize in advance for the potentially sporadic nature of this entry as there is a lot to say. Of course a part of the reason why it has been so long since I have written is due to the lack of internet access in Dir (not completely saying that I mind though = ) but more importantly is because in the 2 months past there has been a lot to process and I've been wondering where and how to start an entry encompassing them.

So let me start off with saying, that all my fears in moving to post where (as many of you had told me prior) nothing to worry about. I was concerned about safety, and how I was going to do without electricity in the evenings, I was worried about how to move all my things into my house, or how I was going to figure out the little routines that make up our lives. But one of the beauties about living in a village is that you don't need to worry, things get taken care of by working with the people around you, and moving into Dir was a more seamless and welcoming processes than I could have imagined.

My house wasn't quite ready when I first got there so I spent the first couple of nights living with my community host, Norbert and his family. My first night in Dir was such a testimony of how training had prepared me to move to a village on my own. I showered outside in a bucket, slept in a room without a door or curtain, and woke up in the middle of the night to mice underneath my bed. And those three things (shocking to say) were no big deal, whereas if that would have been my first night in Cameroon I would have been RUNNING to the country director and asking for the first ticket home.

As for the little things I was worried about: I feel incredibly secure in Dir, and know that if there was ever an issue of my safety the officials would help me take care of it in a heartbeat. As for no electricity, there is something incredibly romantic about not having lights in your house at night (and even though I'm not sharing that romance with anyone and instead have the sleep schedule of an old lady) im enjoying peaceful evenings and early mornings. As far as little routines go, I'm starting to figure it out and I think the best example I can give as to how life goes in village is the process in which I go fetch water.

About every two weeks or so I go to one of the local pumps with empty bidongs and fill them up to store in my house. Although African women can EASILY carry a 25 L bidong on their head, I'm not quite at their level yet (although I am practicing, and one of my village friends' Olivia, constantly has me carrying buckets of water, wood for cooking, you-name-it on my head....at first I thought it was CRAZY to carry things on your head, but after a couple of months, now I'm wondering why we don't carry anything on our heads in the States! Not only do these people have absolutely stunning posture, but it truly does help balance the weight of the object you are carrying! Side note: you should see how funny people's reactions are to the concept that in America no one carries things on their head) So in order to fill up my bidongs I have to take a walk into town and ask around for who has a wheelbarrow that I can borrow. I then take it to the pump and wait around with the kids and women until its my turn to pump. Let me tell you, pumping water is an absolutely KILLER workout and fortunately the little kids usually take pity on me halfway through my bidongs and help me out. Further more, after I load the bidongs onto the wheelbarrow and just as I am starting to think to myself, "Amanda how the hell are you going to push this baby home?" little boys will appear out of nowhere to help me push it back home together.

That is something that I am really loving about village life, that people come together to help each other, often without realizing that they are doing it. There is an Cameroonian expression that goes, "Nous sommes ensemble" essentially translated to: "We're in this together" and its an expression that I coming to love, and hoping to define my two years of service with.

Essentially, the expression also encompasses the Peace Corps approach to development. For the first three months at post, our jobs as Peace Corps Volunteers are to integrate and observe. The Peace Corps believes that before you can really start any projects or start serving the community, you need to get to know the community, and in doing so, you will get to know what their needs are. I really appreciate this approach to development, as I think understanding and knowing a community is key to starting a chain of events that could potentially lead to sustainable change.

The tasks of observation and integration take a different role every single day. In order to give myself some structure I have been going to help at the hospital about 2-3 days a week. There is a lot of good work that is being done at the hospital, and more than anything the nurses and doctor work with the resources that they have. There's been some days at the hospital that have absolutely shocked me with the injustice of malnourished kids who look like their 6 months old, even though their almost reaching their 2nd birthday. Every Thursday, at prenatal consultations, I never fail to be shocked by how many women come to the hospital, how YOUNG most of them are, and how many children these tired women have.

But I have also been trying to get myself out into the community and understand what living life here is really all about. Some days that means I go and work the fields (which woooh let me tell you is ANOTHER killer workout, and also incredibly humbling as trees that take me close to 50 blows to knock down takes the grandma's maximum of 5!) other days that means I sit underneath a tree and learn how to braid my little neighbor's hair (she's the only one who will allow me to experiment on her!) and yet other days I spend the days at the stream washing my clothes. At first it was difficult for people to understand why I wasn't working at the hospital every single day, but slowly I was able to explain a couple of things. First off) I believe that partaking in the activities that make up daily life will help me to better understand and ultimately serve the community. Secondly) Another goal of the Peace Corps experience is for the volunteer to learn the life and culture of another country. Slowly and surely, I think people in Dir are starting to get a better feel as to what I am doing here and as their understanding that, I'm starting to feel like more a part of the community instead of the latest exhibition at the zoo (I don't think I have ever been gawked at, prodded, or examined more in my life than I was within my first few weeks at post. But understandly so, I'm sure that if I went to a school where everyone had orange hair and someone showed up with NEON green hair I would also be wondering "What are you DOING here???")

One of my favorite activities in trying to integrate into Dir has been going to the local high school's (lycee)dance practices for Youth Day (Feb. 11th). I went to introduce myself to the lycee because I hope to work with the schools in Dir to teach some health lessons and befriend the lycee students as they are making a lot of decisions that will affect the rest of their lives (particularly in a country where AIDS is rampant). When one of the teachers mentioned a dance team, I practically jumped out of my seat to ask if I could watch the practices. So for the past month, I have been going maybe once or twice a week to watch the high school students prepare for the Youth Day Celebrations. (Youth Day is definitely a bigger deal in Dir than Christmas was, as celebrations--in a combination of sporting events, dances, sketches, and parades--started on Wednesday and continued through Saturday!) In the midst of one of the practices I jumped in to join and thus last Friday, I performed a traditional Baya dance with some of the lycee girls in front of the whole village, including the traditional chief, which of course people were cracking up at!

There are some days that I struggle with what I am actually doing here. No matter what, I feel as if I am recieving so much more out of this experience than I could possibly give. I question what I can actually DO for these people, how I can create a project that will actually help and last within the community. But, then there are moments like dancing in front of the community and I am reassured that if all else fails during my time here at least I am providing Dir with a new source of entertainment = )

Show N' Tell

Well guess what folks...I did it! Officially finished training and took the step from being a trainee to a volunteer, as my Pops would say, "ay ay ay!" The ceremony was on Thursday and the new volunteers celebrated that evening by having a dance party at a nearby hotel in Bafia. Moving to Dir early next week and am currently in the regional capitol of the Adamoua. I know a few of you have been asking for photos so I figured I would take advantage of the good internet connection to share some snapshots of the past couple of months:





 
       A view of Bokito, note: the village boys playing soccer in the background & the girl carrying  
                                       things on her head like it was no big deal!




 
         My host family! The two older boys are missing from this snapshot, but essentially this was the gang that I hung out with for 3 months. In the green shirt eating is Nick (16), in the head
wrap is Fabiola (21), the blue traditional dress is Jordan (17), the one planting a smooch is Patrick
                              (14), and in her workout clothes is Merveille (20).

        Merveille in her typical position as she cooks a meal for the family over the open fire. Note

             her munching on some corn (during season its an easy appetizer for most any meal!)



           A favorite activity in the Bogo household, the kids teaching me their dance moves! In this
                                  shot, Nick is teaching me some hip-hop moves.


         Patrick fell in love with my bike (provided to me by the Peace Corps!) and he would take it for rides once I got home from school. Side note: pink bucket in the background is where I did my
            laundry and also took my baths (although I would move it inside for bathtime!)

A picture of the chicken comitee happily eating pre be-heading. If you look closely you can see in the second picture that the chickens have been defeathered and we're getting ready to gut them! Also note the crazy hair design that Jordan gave me for the big day!



Blessing, one of the many village tailors, who quickly became our favorite. Many morning breaks were spent sitting and visiting with her.



                     The Bogo's dog, Reigne, had puppies about two weeks before I left!


         Most of the Sante trainees celebrating Halloween (note pirate patch in the background) at
                                                      a local bar in Bokito.


My host mother, Mama Bogo Therese, and I on the day of swearing-in!



           Post taking the Peace Corps Oath: 22 new-fresh-off-the-grill Sante volunteers! (A tradition here is that for any big ceremony, i.e. marriages, funerals, graduations, reunions, people
                 buy matching fabric and make uniforms...thus the matching clothes!)


           A glimpse of the train up north. Every hour or so there is a stop and local villagers come
            running up to the train with all sorts of goodies on sale...the original drive through!